The Return Of Oz
by Caleb Jones
Summary: There is only one way Oz can return and get Willow back now that Tara is the new love in Willow's life. But he'll have to make a great personal sacrifice... His life and his gender! And what will happen to Tara? Tune in and find out!


The characters herein belong to Joss Whedon and company. I make no claim on them and am simply borrowing them for a fictional adventure. Thus no money may be made by the selling of this story without the express written consent of the copyright owners of the characters as well as the consent of the writer listed below. No site which charges a fee to read stories may post it without permission from the above.  
  
  
THE RETURN OF OZ  
BY CALEB JONES  
  
Oz finished an inexpensive, but well cooked meal in a small Paris restaurant. He downed the last of the wine, got up from the table, and cleaned up in the restroom. If his plans went as expected tonight, he realized this would be the last time he would use the men's bathroom. No great loss.   
  
No, the only great loss in his life happened the day he drove away from Sunnydale, and from Willow, the beautiful young woman he loved. The only woman he could ever love. And he had himself and two women to thank for losing his Willow. The first woman was a teenaged witch much like his Willow. Her name was Tara and she had taken his place in her heart after he had broken it.   
  
The other woman was the girl, no - the creature - who had broken them up. She was a singer with a beautiful voice and the same curse as his own. But she gloried in her curse and gave in to its dark side. He had finally been forced to kill her to save Willow's life, but the animalistic needs of his cursed side for his feminine counterpart had doomed their love. Willow no longer wanted him. The very sight of him reminded her of his betrayal, no matter how much against his will it may have been.   
  
After all the anger and pain he had caused her with his uncontrollable animalistic urges for his female counterpoint, Willow had turned away from all men and fallen for another woman. Tara. Oz was cool with homosexuality. It wasn't for him but if it was what others wanted, who was he to have any objections. Love was hard enough to find in any form.  
  
He had found his ideal love, held her in his arms, and lost it all in a moment of madness. But he couldn't bear to lose that love forever. If Willow wanted a woman, then so be it. There was one solution. As impossible as it might seem to most, the woman who Willow loved would have to be him!  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Oz looked over the artifacts he had located from various antique and magic shops that were abundant in the older parts of cities in France and other European countries. He had spent every penny of the money he made with his band to find the right spell and gathered together the proper ingredients. In a few hours the moon would be full but that would no longer be his problem. His two great problems would be solved by one spell.   
  
Tonight was perfect. Oz was prepared. Soon Willow would be his lover once again!  
  
He took his wallet and the rest of his limited finances and mailed them back to one of his band members for safekeeping. He didn't want the soon-to-be-replacement Oz catching a flight back to the United States and breaking up his reunion with Willow before it could begin. A penniless foreigner with no identification or passport would have far more to worry about than stopping his spell. Once the monthly were-curse possessed his body, the new occupant would want nothing more than to escape the chains and the cell she, or rather he, was locked inside of. The old abandoned WWII building was too run down for tourists and not on any tourist map, but it was just right for securing a rampaging werewolf.   
  
By the time Tara managed to escape and get to a phone, more than twenty-four hours would be up, the exchange would be permanent, and he would be Willow's true love once again!  
  
After preparing the spell and securing the chains, Oz was more than ready. He started chanting the ancient words which would employ the magics and exchange the souls of the spellcaster and another being. The weeks spent translating them would soon pay off. He had learned quite a bit about magic from Willow and her mentor Giles. He threw the silver dust onto the ground and walked through it. It would weaken his cursed wolfspirit just enough to allow his human soul to leave and accept a new soul to take its place. Then he locked himself up in chains and secured the cell door. No werewolf would attack the innocent people of France tonight, no matter which soul was in charge of the body he planned to leave behind.   
  
He relaxed and tried to allow the spell to take effect. Soon Oz felt his self, his soul, float away from his body and France, and he swiftly sent his spirit soaring towards his former hometown of Sunnydale. He psychically homed in on the bright soul of the girl he loved, Willow. It was early morning in California, and Willow and Tara would be likely be asleep in the house they both were renting if his information was correct. Oz drifted through a side wall and a door, and found two women sprawled in a deep sleep in a single bed. He saw his former girlfriend Willow and was pleased. She looked happy even in a deep sleep.   
  
His spirit floated over the other body on the bed. She was attractive enough. He hesitated a moment as he hovered over Tara's body long enough to burn her image into his mind. He didn't want to do this to her, but the sight of his real body caused Willow to cringe with pain from the memory of betrayal. Then, after once again deciding he had no other option if he wanted Willow's love, Oz threw his soul inside the body of her bedmate Tara, the other woman in his ex-girlfriend's life, and his unfortunate victim. For a moment, their two spirits were one. Oz took advantage of this to absorb many of the memories attached to her body as the spell had suggested. Tara's memories would help him keep up the masquerade of her identity when he woke up inside her body, living her life. He forced an image of his own body into the other spirit, anchored his astral cord into the other entity, and cast the surprised and overwhelmed soul away. Tara's spirit was unwillingly drawn back towards Oz's bodily shell back in France. The body of Tara wrapped a slim, feminine arm around the young woman who loved her and settled into a deep sleep.   
  
When he woke up, the first thing Oz noticed was the smell of perfume. He recognized Willow's scent, as well as the scent of another woman's perfume. His half awake mind thought Buffy must be around until he rolled over onto his stomach and felt soft, sensitive flesh on his upper chest press into the mattress. As he moved, hair readjusted itself and fell across his face. His hair was much too short to move like that. 'The spell!' he thought... 'It must have worked!' He snapped wide awake and pushed himself up from the mattress and into a sitting position on the bed with his feet behind him. Oz felt his chest move again as his feet felt the contact of a rear end that was much thicker and softer than he was used to possessing. Opening his eyes and swiftly glancing down, he saw two nicely sized mounds of flesh pushing out the T-shirt he was wearing.   
  
He trembled slightly as he realized he had breasts. From the looks of them, his new boobs were quite a bit bigger than Willows. He brushed loose hair from in front of his eyes. Dirt blonde strands of hair confirmed the obvious. The spell had indeed worked. Oz was now a female, his soul now residing within the physical form of Tara, Willow's new significant other! A picture of Willow framed on a bureau with her arm around another woman with the same dirty blonde hair as he now possessed confirmed the accuracy of the exchange. He was once again the lover of the beautiful Willow!  
  
Oz heard the sound of dishes rattling in a kitchen and the smell of coffee brewing. A big smile appeared on his new face as footsteps approached the bedroom door and Willow popped her head in through the doorway. She cheerily spoke to him.   
  
"Oh, good, you are finally awake, you sleepyhead." she said with a girlish giggle. "You have just enough time to take a shower and get dressed before breakfast is ready. Your first class starts in an hour, Tara, so don't just sit there, start moving, girl!" Willow tossed a stuffed toy at him and went back out to the kitchen. God, she was still as beautiful as she was the last time he had seen her.   
  
And so much happier, he reflected. She had been struggling to hold back tears when he had left that fateful day so many months ago after his body had betrayed them both. But this new body could give him a second chance! Willow was obviously happy again and that was all that mattered.   
  
He stood up and gently moved his new body around. He felt his boobs move under the shirt again as he stood up and they settled down once more. Quite strange, but not at all unpleasant! The T-shirt fell down over his hips and fell to his upper thighs. It turned out to be some sort of nightgown in the style of a shirt. A check of his other extremities showed him that his new feet were smaller, as were the hands. His hips were of course now wider, and he took several steps around the bedroom to adjust to the way they moved.   
  
Of course he had known there were many differences between the bodies of men and women, but until experiencing both, he hadn't begun to realize how unique each gender was.   
  
Somehow he had thought he would just be missing something down below and have to deal with something extra up above after the swap, but there was far more to it than that. The very way his body walked about was different than before. His hips gave off a gentle swivel that he knew would attract the eyes of men once hew was outside. Not that he wanted men to look at him of course. He just wanted a body that Willow liked and could bring herself to love, and this body was obviously it. And so, now it was his.   
  
He felt more amazement at the way the new breasts moved up and down and back and forth in reaction to every movement his body made. Could it be that a woman could get used to that amazing feeling of almost independent movement? Would he come to accept it as a normal part of his new existence as a woman? It wasn't going to happen at this moment, he knew. This was better in some ways than the first time he had explored the body of a young woman years before he had met Willow. New feelings from within and without awaited his discovery.  
  
He reached up and held one breast in his hand as he went in search of the shower Willow said he should have. The bathroom wasn't hard to find. It smelled of shampoo and powder, deodorant and a variety of other feminine odors. No man used this bathroom, he knew. And with the body he now had, it would remain the domain of females. He was without a doubt a member of that gender now, physically at least. Oz took off the nightgown Tara had fallen asleep in the night before, pulling it over his head like any man would. It caught on his protruding breasts and yanked them up painfully until the gown came off and the boobs went bouncing around like mad on his chest. Oz would have to be more careful from now on. These things needed special attention. As he comforted them with his hands, he hoped Tara was a girl who wore bras. Between the pain and the distractions he was now aware of from his feminine chest, he wanted them to remain secured and immobile for the rest of the day. The shower should take the pain away, he expected, as he gently rubbed the soft mounds as if comforting a scared pet. Oz turned the water on and adjusted the temperature until his silky skin seemed comfortable under the spray, and he stepped inside the stall. As he soaped up his new form, Oz wondered how Tara was doing with his former body.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Tara screamed as she came awake! Everything she knew was suddenly different!  
  
She had struggled to pull her damaged soul together in her nightmare until she finally awoke and realized she was no longer safe at home in her bedroom. There was no bed! It, the entire room, and Willow, were gone. She was chained up on the floor of some sort of cell. The only light came from a skylight through which moonlight could be seen. She loved the moonlight! She and Willow would often stare at it before going to sleep. It was so romantic! But now she was in chains and the moonlight just seemed scary...   
  
Her skin began to crawl and itch and it seemed much hairier than usual as she scratched. Her blood began pulsing in her veins until it started to hurt. Then the pain truly began and she felt the urge to howl once more! Her thoughts became unclear and filled with anger...   
  
Then her world went dark and only pain remained.  
  
When she could finally think again, Tara realized she was curled into the fetal position, her knees hugged into her bosom. Something about that felt strange, like something that should be felt but was missing. She had more to worry about though. She was still chained up, and a prisoner. What the devil had happened to her, and was her Willow safe?  
  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Willow hummed to herself as she heard the shower run. Her sweetie was up and about. She looked down at herself and figured there was just enough time to get dressed before the bacon was done. She praised the gods for microwaves once again and ran to their bedroom. Willow tossed her bathrobe on the bed and donned a bra. She borrowed a skirt Tara didn't like anymore but looked great on her, and put on a nice blouse to go with it. Her make-up would just have to wait, the omelets needed to be turned over. She swiftly ran back to the kitchen, but Buffy was there. Her best friend had let herself in and was flipping over the eggs.  
  
"Morning, Willow! I hope you don't mind but I didn't think you wanted to set off the smoke alarm with our breakfast." Buffy giggled, so her best girlfriend would know she was joking. Willow was surprisingly flexible, much like her namesake, but her high intelligence sometimes let her hear nuances in words that no one intended to say. It was usually good to be clear what you meant when chatting about something that could be taken the wrong way. Like burned eggs, for example. Buffy changed the topic and commented on Willow's outfit. "Nice skirt, Will! Is that new?"  
  
Willow twirled around and was pleased by Buffy's question. Buffy had great taste in clothes, as did Tara. "No, this skirt is Tara's. It is nice, isn't it."   
  
Buffy giggled again. "Just another benefit of having a female lover, right, Willow? If I wore Angel's or Riley's pants, they would be so big on me I would trip in them and probably look like a clown. You, on the other hand, can wear her clothes and look fantastic! It's almost enough to make me consider a change in the gender of my next significant other if Riley and I ever break up... Not that we will, of course," Buffy quickly added, trying not to let her doubts about her own relationship show. She wasn't ready to talk about it yet.  
  
Willow and Buffy started to prepare the table for breakfast and the sounds of a shower stopped. "Tara should be down shortly, Buffy. We both have classes to get to soon." The two girlfriends discussed their courses while they waited for Tara to join them.  
  
Oz toweled off his new body slowly. It was far more sensitive to a towel than his male skin ever was. He supposed it was because of a combination of softer skin and less hair on the body he now possessed. His legs were so incredibly smooth! He marveled at the soft white skin. Apparently Tara wasn't a fan of the sun. That was all right, as long as she wasn't a vampire, of course! His new skin felt as if he was fatter than usual but a long look in the full length mirror at the attractive nude young woman reflected back at him and he knew his new form had no excess weight problem!   
  
Oz realized he was now quite a beauty, though Willow was of course far more the beautiful of the two of them. The young woman in the mirror was an image he would have to start to think of as his own, a vastly different one from the slender male body he had lived with until this morning. He rubbed his smooth hairless chin and realized he would never have a goatee again. In fact, the only shaving he would have to worry about would be his legs and under his arms.   
  
Oz wrapped a towel around his body, quickly readjusting it around his bosom to fit the girl that he now was. It easily covered up the empty triangle of hair between his legs as well as the ample curves his chest offered. He quickly went back to the room he had awoken in and the chill of the corridor hit his body after leaving the warmth of the bathroom. He looked around the bedroom and located Tara's bureau from the lack of familiar Willow artifacts atop it. Poking around, he found a drawer filled with bras and panties. He remembered his intention to wear bras with the full chest he now had and tried to put one on. It was a lot harder to get into than it was to take one off.   
  
Oz thought about what he knew about bras and finally remembered one night when he had watched Willow put one on after they had made love. It seemed to trigger some memories in the body he wore and felt like the right way to put one on. So he put it on backwards as Willow had, and twisted it around. Then he bent forward a bit and positioned his new body parts into the proper place in the bra. After adjusting it a bit for a more comfortable feel, he pulled on the panties. The bra worked! The boobs no longer swung around like they did in the shower while he washed his legs. He hadn't minded them bumping into each other as well as his arms and legs while washing, in fact it was rather pleasant, but it was also very strange and he had to deal with more than just a stranger's body this morning. He had to handle a brand new life and identity as Tara.   
  
It seemed a formidable task. A few foreign memories popping into his mind were becoming helpful, like knowing that he, or rather Tara, had planned to wear a blue pantsuit, but so many other things were still unknown to the spirit of the man inside the body of Tara. Even the report he'd received back in Paris from a private detective he'd hired to gather information about her life contained only surface information. He hadn't been able to let the man dig deeper because of his fear that Willow would find out or the man might uncover Buffy as the slayer. He had an idea of where he should go to attend classes and the names of a few friends and teachers, and the report also included her fashion tastes and styles, but beyond that, he would have to wing it.  
  
He could hear Buffy's voice downstairs and pulled on the lowest heeled shoes he could find that fit his small feet. Looking at all the shoes in the closet, it was hard to believe that Willow's feet were even smaller than his were now. He would have to start thinking of shoes as pointed things with heels instead of the round, wide and flat, and more importantly, comfortable, shoes he had worn as a male. He brushed out Tara's hair as best he could, trying to match it to the picture on the bureau. He wondered again how she was doing with his former body as he went downstairs to have breakfast with the love of his life and his old friend Buffy.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Tara screamed as she stared down at a dirty, hairy, and very masculine body! Her beautiful curves were gone. There was no doubt at all that she was no longer female. She was a lesbian but that didn't mean she hadn't seen a few penises in her short life. And hers wanted to go to the bathroom. There was a drain in the corner that seemed to be the closest thing to a bathroom in the cell she was locked in. Embarrassed though she was, she had to go, and so she did. It was weird and strange. It was a more powerful feeling than she had ever felt while going to the bathroom, and it was over faster as well. It was more efficient than the old squat and piss method women had to employ when there were no bathrooms around. There was nothing else to do but go to another corner and wait. Someone had to have put her here, and in the wrong body, probably one of Buffy's enemies, and she hoped they planned to let her go. She prayed her Willow was safe and sound . . .  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Oz entered the kitchen and Willow came up to him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a brief kiss with Buffy nearby, but a nice one. A very nice one. She tasted the same as he remembered but it felt a little different. He realized his lips were... thicker... now, and perhaps a little more sensitive to the touch of the lips of another. He felt his breasts press against Willow's smaller bosom. Another weird yet wonderful feeling. It excited his new body in ways that were almost familiar and yet so very different at the same time. He looked forward to exploring those feelings with Willow later on. As a man, he had been rather short and his new body was about the same height as the last time he had kissed her as a man, but that was about all that hadn't changed greatly since the spell had been cast. He had to restrain a chuckle at his little joke as he took a quick look down at his curvaceous female body. He still had two legs, two arms and a head. It really wasn't beyond his ability to adjust to a new gender, he thought. Now that he had Willow back in his life, he felt like he could adapt to anything!  
  
Buffy complimented Oz on the pantsuit he was wearing. "Thank you, Buffy." he said as demurely as he could. His higher pitched voice sounded strange to his ears. The investigator's report had indicated Tara was a shy and retiring type of girl, so Oz planned to speak as little as possible for a while. He needed to catch up to speed on the new life he was going to live as Tara.   
  
Getting adjusted to being a female would be more difficult than he had expected. A simple meal was a new experience and there was much to learn. Every word he spoke, every move he made served to remind him of the new female physicality he now possessed. Even the food tasted different than before. Willow had put cream and sugar into his coffee apparently copying the way Tara like hers prepared, and so he had to drink it like that now that he was she. But to his surprise, he liked the coffee prepared in that fashion. Oz remained quiet through the meal, happy just to watch Willow chat with Buffy. Soon, the meal was over and Buffy left for school.   
  
Willow linked an arm through Oz's and escorted her lover's body back to the bedroom. She picked out a pair of earrings and handed them to Oz. "I think my new earrings would look great with that suit, Tara. Why don't you try them on, dear?" Luckily, Oz had worn an earring for years so putting on a pair of somewhat more elaborate jewelry wasn't too difficult a task for the former man to handle. Putting on make-up was something else. He managed to cover his lips with lipstick well enough. Reading through several women's magazines back in Paris had been very informative. Still, the real thing was something quite different.   
  
Willow had also made up her lips and had done her eyes up a bit as well. "Aren't you going to do your eyes as well, Tara? You have such pretty eyes!" She loved Tara but the girl lacked self esteem due to an abusive father. Willow tried to build up her girlfriend's self confidence whenever possible. Besides, Tara DID have very pretty eyes!  
  
Oz blushed at the thought of having eyes that could be called 'pretty'. He needed to give an answer that would cover his lack of knowledge about cosmetics. "No, I think I'll go the natural route today, these wonderful earrings are going to gather enough attention. They really are nice. Thanks for loaning them to me." Hopefully, that would throw her off the track of him not knowing how to make up Tara's eyes.   
  
"You're welcome, Tara. Oh my, look at the clock! We have to hustle if we want to get to our classes on time. Here's your purse." Willow grabbed two purses and handed Oz one that presumably belonged to Tara. Then she took him by the hand and led the new Tara out into a new life, a life where a man named Oz was just a distant memory to two women who loved each other.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Tara heard a click on the second day of captivity and a key dropped from a box built into the ceiling. She cautiously unlocked her chains and opened the cell with the key. A pair of pants and a shirt waited in a corridor leading outside. She had no money and was afraid of turning into an animal again.   
  
She had been shocked to find herself stranded in France. It was a foreign land and no one seemed to speak English. She stole some change from a table in an outdoor cafe and tried to call Willow to warn her of the attack that had turned her into a man who turned into an animal. But when she heard her own voice answer the phone and Willow laughing at something in the background, she hung up. If Willow was happy, how could she go back and destroy that happiness. She couldn't. If Willow was happy with an imitation of her, than that was the way it had to be. Her father was right. She wasn't worthy of happiness. Losing her body and her life and especially Willow all in one night proved that to her beyond any hopes her fragile ego could find.  
  
Tara found a job at a local French vineyard, and when she felt the urge of her body to become less than human, she ran away and locked herself back up inside the cage she had woke up in during her first night in a new body. As a werewolf, she howled through the night for the loss of her mate. Then in the morning she cried over the loss of her former life. Lonely months passed by for Tara until eventually she met a French waitress at dinner one night after work who spoke English. After several weeks and many meals a physical attraction to the woman eventually led to a romantic relationship. The French woman wasn't Willow, but she was nice and had a good heart. At least no one seemed upset that she loved a woman anymore. That was at least one benefit of having a man's body besides the obvious ones she had discovered once their relationship had moved from the living room into the bedroom.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Back in Sunnydale, there were some close calls for the new Tara but no one suspected Willow's lover of being a different person on the inside. Willow was upset for a while that her lover had suddenly lost the feminine skills that made her a superior lover but 'Tara' put the blame on the stress of school. After a few weeks, her bedroom skills began to flourish again as Oz learned what a woman wanted, and the two females were soon happy full time lovers again.  
  
Tara's generally shy demeanor, and the fact that the former Oz already knew so much about almost every one of Willow's friends, at least those which cared about Willow the most, paid off well for the gender-bent Oz. He was quietly able to observe them all long enough to catch up on what he had missed while he was away.   
  
Gradually, he 'grew out' of the shyness of his body's predecessor, and after studying witchcraft for a while with Willow, the new Tara became a vital part of the vampire hunting group of friends and supporters to the slayer.   
  
  
The End  
  



End file.
